Where Champions Are Made: Hamburg
Editorial
Hamburg has recently become the capital of beach volleyball in Germany as the city hosted international events in each of the last five years, most notably the 2019 FIVB World Championship. The town’s importance to the success of German beach volleyball, however, goes well beyond that as the city is also home to most of the nation’s top teams.
That’s the case because beach volleyball is one of the several Olympic and Paralympic sports that get to use the Olympiastützpunt, one of the three Olympic bases built and maintained by the country’s Olympic Committee across the nation.
The world-class facility was adopted by the German Federation as the base for the country’s national teams in 2017 and since then has started hosting most of the nation’s top teams, as well as youth players.
Born in Starnberg, 26-year-old Clemens Wickler, who won silver at the 2019 World Championship with partner Julius Thole just a few miles away at the Rothenbaum stadium, is one of the players who moved to the North of the country to practice at the facility.
Clemens Wickler“I started training in there in 2017, when the German Federation decided to centralize the national teams, but Julius was born in Hamburg and has been training there his entire life. There’s a lot of space and green areas in the facility and all the buildings are spread out, which makes it feel really nice. It’s great that everything we need is in there, in one of those buildings. We don’t need to go anywhere else to get physiotherapy or to meet our psychologist.”
German Beach Volleyball Player
There is, indeed, no shortage of space in the massive venue. Besides eight indoor and nine outdoor courts, the training center also houses offices and professionals ready to assist the athletes with exercise science, physiotherapy, sports medicine, sports psychology and sports nutrition. Literally, anything they need, they will find at the Olympiastützpunt.
Isabel Schneider“The OSP is my second home in Hamburg. I spend so much time there training, doing physiotherapy and just talking to people. And I really appreciate the fact that I feel really good there.”
German Beach Volleyball Player
Not many sports are as simple to play as beach volleyball. A ball and a net are all it takes to play the sport at the amateur level. For the professionals, however, having an efficient training facility is a mandatory condition for success due to the high level the sport has reached over the last 30 years. European beach volleyball teams are no exception and one of the nicest things about it is that players can find exactly what they need in a variety of different setups. Our series “Where Champions Are Made” will present some of the most popular beach volleyball training facilities in the continent.